A long time customer of ours brought us a gorgeous 2008 Subaru WRX STi looking to upgrade the stereo. These cars come right from the factory with many cool features and a great power package under the hood. The one part about a Subaru of this style that is severely lacking… is the stereo. The car was designed as a rally racing machine so they don’t put much effort into the audio side of things. But why would anyone that drives the car regularly sacrifice listening to great quality music? That’s where we come in!
This customer had already done his research and picked his favorite head unit. He chose a Pioneer AVICZ2 navigation system and installed it himself. We went above and beyond his original install and securely hid his XM tuner, installed the XM antenna and navigation GPS antenna. He was also interested in adding a backup camera, so we installed a high quality camera called the TDCAMBAR made by Intraphex. This is a hard-wired rear license plate mounted camera that produces a great image which appears on the 7 inch display of his Pioneer navigation system. The camera is instantly activated as soon as he puts the car in reverse. With this setup he can also switch to the rear view image while driving, if he ever wants to see what’s directly behind him.
Now we move on to the rest of the Subaru STi stereo. After listening to many different types of speakers, we decided with the customer to go with the German Maestro Epic EV6508 component package in the front doors. The titanium dome tweeters deliver such incredibly realistic high frequencies that, combined with the high quality woofers, you would think you are sitting 5 feet in front of the band right in the recording studio. To provide rear-fill and give it a great sound all the way around, we installed German Maestro Concept CC6508 coax speakers in the rear factory locations. Now, to power all of these speakers we installed a JL Audio XD4004 amplifier hidden under the passenger seat. The amp is so small phyically that we can hide it in many vehicles completely out of sight. We have even installed the XD series amps behind factory trim panels and inside dashboards! This amplifier produces an impressive amount of power for it’s size, complementing the components we installed and allowing the customer to experience the full potential of what these speakers can really do.
We then installed two products made by Hushmat in the front and rear doors. A Subaru STi does not come with much sound deadening material from the factory, making it a somewhat noisy ride. First, the Ultra Damping Padding to reduce vibrations in the door panels and low frequency exterior noise. Second, the Silencer Megabond foam padding to reduce high frequency noise (wind, etc.) which also increases the sound quality reproduction of the speakers since this drastically reduces any other sounds coming from the doors that would interfere. These two products together perform very well. Anyone looking to have new speakers installed in their vehicle should consider products like the Ultra Damping and Silencer Megabond. They make a noteworthy difference in any application.
As of this point in time, the customer was not interested in adding a subwoofer for low end bass. He is looking to keep the weight of the car down, and keep as much cargo area as possible. Future plans for the car are to add a small subwoofer in a custom enclosure built with fiberglass to reduce weight. It would also be molded into the side of the cargo area to maintain as much room as possible. The addition of a subwoofer will top off this already-superb sounding stereo in his Subaru STi.
The customer was just as pleased as we were with the outcome of this stereo system. It always makes our day seeing that big grin on the customers face when they pick up their car. That is what we strive to do. We have not come this far and built such a reputation by selling to people on a one-time basis. We look forward to getting to know each individual customer and fulfilling their hopes and dreams! We hope to continue to work with this particular customer as we have been for years!
